Olympics -- Sweden and the Games 1

Pierre de Coubertin was by no means the first person to revive the ancient Olympic Games. The idea was born much earlier in the Renaissance period, with its renewed interest in the classical world. Thus the first Cotswold ‘Olimpick Games’ were held in England in the 17th century and there were similar events in other countries well before the first of the modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.

An Olympic Association formed in southern Sweden arranged its Games at Ramlösa (Helsingborg) in 1834, with four series of competitions that included jumping over a horse and climbing a mast, as well as running various distances. They were all held on the same fine summer’s day in July.

The first event was a kind of gymnastics competition, in which there were seven competitors. It was won by a student from the old university city of Lund, who was awarded a gold ring. This was followed by a race in which an apprentice blacksmith finished ahead of nineteen other runners, he being similarly rewarded, while the winner of the wrestling tournament, in which seven men took part, was given a silver jug. Competitors in the final event had to climb a slippery pole some 10m (33 ft) high, with a silver cup going to the first person to bring it down from its perch at the top. As this favoured the first ones to try, lots were drawn to decide the order. However, the hearts of the crowd went not to the winner, but a young boy who later shinned up the soapy pole in great style, and they made a collection for him.

The prime mover behind the Helsingborg Games was a gymnastics and fencing teacher, Gustaf Johan Scharteau. He held them again in 1836 and later turned his attention to Stockholm where a similar event was scheduled for 1843 in the large open area known as Gärdet. Unfortunately, it proved a dismal failure, not because of a lack of public support, but the reverse. It was too popular. Far more people came than the officials expected or could cope with. Tickets had been sold, but there were thousands of gatecrashers and all ended in chaos. Moreover, the winner of the slippery mast-climbing event had only just received his prize when it was snatched from him by one of the spectators, whereupon a new event was added to the schedule, a great chase after the culprit, who turned out to be a 14-year-old boy.

More to come...

On their minds (2)

With the torturous tooth no longer uppermost in my thoughts after the antibiotics had done their temporary work, I was soon among a different set of local inhabitants, thousands of miles away from those concerned about the Wellington ‘spy car’. So what was on their minds? Now it was gun laws, taxes on the rich and the so-called ‘trickle down’ effect, whether or not poverty is a prime cause of poor educational results, obesity, the proposed Californian high-speed rail project, healthcare and banning outdoor smoking in public areas, that drove readers to make their views known in the press. “It’s not guns but people that kill,” stated a staunch supporter of the National Rifle Association after yet another rampage shooting – which sounded bizarre to someone who has always believed that if you haven’t got a gun you can’t shoot anybody. “California has one of the strictest gun laws in the country,” it was averred, yet at the same time it was revealed that semi-automatic weapons are not banned! Back in Sweden, mercifully not part of the Eurozone, minds are concentrating on the all-too-brief, but intense, summer season despite its exceptionally damp start. Last month was the wettest on record in the Stockholm area and parts of the country are suffering from severe flooding. July is the main holiday month in these parts and we still have faint hopes of better weather to come, though it has yet to make an appearance on the weather maps. Meanwhile the politicians were gathered last week on the offshore island of Gotland, along with an army of lobbyists, PR consultants, media hordes and many more for the annual jamboree in which most of them are busily employed seeking publicity for themselves or those they represent or aim to promote, while 8.1 per cent of the rest of the work force have no employment at all, with the figure for young people some three times as high. However, holiday time it is and even my dental problems, after flaring up again for a time, are taking a much-needed rest after being calmed in my trusted tooth-soother’s lie-flat chair.